Hanoi (VNA) – A seminar tohighlight the importance of goods traceability in trade was held in Hanoi onAugust 24 by the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Addressing the event, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Dang Hoang An underlinedthe traceability of goods is crucial to firms’ production and tradingactivities, but public awareness of the importance of traceability remains low.

In the traceability system, theorigin-tracing stamp is regarded an important factor which identifies andtracks a product unit in the supply chain, the responsibilities of the partiesinvolved in the production, packaging and distribution phases, An said.

This helps to link data and accessinformation throughout the supply chain, An said.

In Vietnam, product traceability isrelatively new but has been implemented rapidly. The use of origin-tracingstamps is becoming more and more common, thereby enhancing consumers’ trust inproducts, he added.

According to An, Vietnamese enterprises,especially small and medium-sized enterprises, are still unaware of the methodand find it hard to develop the system of traceability for their products.

Amy Guihot, an agricultural counsellor fromthe Australian Embassy in Hanoi, said product traceability is an important partof the Australian food management system for both domestically-consumed andexport food.

Therefore, for food processing enterprises,traceability must determine the origin of all inputs such as raw materials,additives, ingredients and packaging methods. Traceability also providesinformation such as the name and address of the suppliers, the date ofdelivery, shipment details, quantity of the product upon delivery, Guihot said.

Dang Thi Phuong Ninh, General Director ofthe Duyen Hai Economic Development Company (COFIDEC), said more and moreagricultural products from Vietnam were being exported to the world market.Traceability was thus an important foundation for creating a secure supplychain to gain the importers’ trust and loyalty.

COFIDEC applies traceability technology for100 percent of its 5,000 tonnes of processed agricultural and aquatic productsin 2018. Since then, COFIDEC has gradually gained trust and loyalty from thebig customers in Japan and the Republic of Korea.

Ninh said the fourth industrial revolutionhas fundamentally changed business and management models with many advancedtechnologies and practical applications such as cloud technology, blockchainand hardware devices and control chips.

With that advantage, the application of theachievements in the 4.0 revolution in traceability will become a major trend.In the future, COFIDEC will implement an electronic traceability system for thewhole supply chain to achieve sustainable development.-VNA